Find Out If Your Neighbor Is Stealing Your WiFi

by Mitz Pantic from Tips4pc.com

How to find out if that neighbor you hate is also stealing your WiFi.–PC Pitstop.

WiFi connections have become so popular and are widely accepted nowadays for various reasons. Using a WiFi connected computer, laptop, or device can have many advantages. For example, you can have more than one device connected to the same internet without any wires to connect.

In spite of all of these benefits, there are various risk factors associated with WiFi connections. Even an outsider who is within the range of your wireless router may be able to access your WiFi, especially if you do not have any wireless security set in place.

Of course, that will gobble up bandwidth and if your Internet bill is based on bandwidth usage, then you will have to pay an extra amount for the usage of someone else that you don’t even know. This might also cause other security concerns as the connection is registered under your name and an unknown person can perform malicious activities using your account. So, it is highly essential to take security measures to avoid such anonymous access of your WiFi connection. If you decided to share your Wifi connection on purpose then these are great points to consider.

As the saying goes “prevention is better than cure”, you need to make sure that none can misuse your internet connectivity. As today’s hackers are smarter and more intelligent than ever before, you should know methods to check if others are stealing your WiFi bandwidth.

connecting to my wifi and using normal internet is fine but it sucks when they start downloading movies and things and you can't access any live stream on your internet. Is there any software or way where you can find out if they are downloading something?

I worked with some other free software to check is any one connected or hacked my WiFi. I feel some kind of slow in my network and I blocked one device with their MAC address. Here is the screen shot I worked with. http://mashtips.com/make-sure-your-wifi-not-hacked/

I know there is an adjustment in preferences or settings that can be made so my wifi network is not broadcast as existing- which could deter would-be hackers. I had it set up that way but a few yrs ago we had to change IP providers, and it was not done. I disabled the “guest” network but would like my wifi name not be broadcast. Can someone help?

Who cares? My router even sets up a Guest Network along with the regular network. I give my neighbors the guest password. No one is going to use that much of my bandwidth.

If someone is good enough to hack into my regular network, they will be good enough to hack through anything I set up.

But I do have a random password (not a standard default) that was generated when by regular network was set up but it is stored somewhere on the network or in my system (it told me what is was, but it is not memorable).

@Richard Remmele: Don’t be so sure. People who download torrents and such can suck a lot of bandwidth. Many ISP providers will slow down your speed or even terminate your account if they suspect this use. Read the fine print from your ISP.

Huh! Is this stuff STILL relevant? Isn’t everyone using WPA by now?
Goodness me- does anyone still wardrive?
Good grief! The least you could do in the above is to advise them to SET A PASSWORD! And NOT “WEP” which I used to crack years ago with Aircrack and similar products.
Folks, anyone reading this far should make sure their home router is using WPA or WPA2 encryption.

Actually while WPA and WPA2 are more secure, these technologies still have their own exploits as well, and are vulnerable to cracking programs such as the infamous Aircrack-ng suite of tools.

WEP is super easy to crack in a few minutes, but if a person fails to set a strong password with WPA/WPA2, all that is needed to crack them is capturing a 4-way handshake in airodump-ng, then running that file against aircrack-ng with a good wordlist.

The best way to make sure you’re secure, is to make sure you’re password aren’t simple words found in a dictionary, and that you make sure to use the correct protocols for your network.

There is also something called WPS (Wireless Protection Setup), which comes installed on most newer routers. There is an exploit with that which makes it dead simple for someone to get access to your network using tools like Reaver, which automates the process and cracks it in a few hours, no matter what password you set, and how strong it is.

It simply cracks the 8-digit pin number of your router.

That said, if you’re serious about network security, read up as much as you can, and educate yourself on best practices.